The December issue of Spin sets out to debunk the 33 "rock myths" that plague our culture, the biggest among them apparently being that Radiohead is good. The article (part of which is available for your perusal online) posits that this century's golden group has degenerated into "an exceptionally well-dressed jam band. That you can't even dance to."
Other fallacies tackled by the magazine? That 50 Cent was shot nine times, that Marilyn Manson had surgery to enable self-fellatio, and that Pink Floyd wrote Dark Side of the Moon as a soundtrack to The Wizard of Oz.
Some of these, of course, are better than others, including the analysis of Kurt Cobain's role in taking down hair metal. But we can't help but wonder what Spin hopes to get out of this. Besides, that thing about Rod Stewart and the stomach full of semen, that's a "myth"; the statement that Radiohead "kinda blows" strikes us as little more than an opinion, contrarian though it may be. [Spin]
Spin, the magazine that thinks Muse, My Chemical Romance, Foo Fighters, Red Hot Chilli Peppers et al are good. Forget Rod Stewart, Spin writers need their stomachs pumped from all the PR semen they ingest.
There are a lot of constructive things to be said about Radiohead being overrated, or that their career has been in decline since the 2001 release of Amnesiac. However, this is petty and desperate sensationalism from a magazine dying a slow, painful and very deserved death.
November 18, 2009 at 6:18 p.m.
Brendan
In rainbows is amazing. It my favourite album by them. I'm not the only one that thinks that either
Even if we agree, for the sake of argument, that Radiohead isn't as good as it once was, you can't contend that the band created the "finest, most original, and significant rock album of the last 15 years" in an article that contends how much that same band sucks.
i think the last issue of Spin i actually bought after picking up was the Iggy interview that Jack Rabid did in '07. does anyone remember when Spin actually was a good read? Byron Coley had a great column on the Underground. but that was ~15-20 years ago.
i think the point is that radiohead is fallible, even though the headline is pretty sensational. very few people were willing to admit that 'in rainbows' was sub-par when it came out (myself included) and it's sort of refreshing to see a major publication come out against some of yorke's more boring material, even if it is gimmicky.
Oldtobegin: I'm with you on that one. It is nice for a major magazine to acknowledge that Radiohead isn't infallible, and I think it's a fine point to make. I just don't think it fits with this article. How is it a myth debunked? And how does fallibility equal "blowing"?
I think the issue is Spin ISN'T a major magazine anymore, and this is a cheap ploy for relevance (which Daba and AM already mentioned). It's also cheaply constructed to spark a kneejerk reaction, feeding on the natural distaste for huge followings. This has very little to do with the band, and a lot more to do with an imagined fanboy reaction to their examples. Cheap, lazy, and really cynically constructed.
Radiohead »
Cheap way to get publicity.